


Exposure Therapy

by sixbeforelunch



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Friendship, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Press and Tabloids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-16 15:17:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/863476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixbeforelunch/pseuds/sixbeforelunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do it yourself psychotherapy? Sounds like a terrible plan, so yeah, of course I'm in."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exposure Therapy

**Author's Note:**

> Please see tags for potential triggers.

"Does Pepper know about this?" Clint asks. He drops the latest copies of US Weekly and In Touch onto the kitchen table, and Tony looks up from his Cocoa Puffs long enough to see the headlines.

One magazine has _Tony Stark's GAY SHOCKER_ emblazoned in big black letters across a photo of him and Bruce standing on the corner of 34th and Lexington looking more than a little intimate. The other is a similar photo, with an inset photo of Pepper looking annoyed at some charity gala or another. _Tony Cheats with a MAN_ is the big headline, with _Inside Pepper Potts' Secret Misery_ in slightly smaller letters underneath.

"Huh," Tony says, over a mouthful of sweetened chocolate-flavored cereal. 

Bruce wanders into the kitchen, then, sees the magazines, blinks twice, picks one up, and fishes his glasses out of his pocket. "Tony is tired of living the lie. Sources close to the billionaire confirm that Tony has decided to follow his heart with his new lover."

Clint pulls another magazine out of his back pocket--did he buy the newsstand?--and displays it for both of them to see.

 _Tony Stark's New Lover Identified as Bruce Banner_. It's the photo from 34th and Lex, side by side with a grainy security cam still from the Harlem Incident. For good measure, the smaller headline reads _Does Tony Stark Have a Death Wish?_

Clint looks back and forth between them, his grin getting wider and wider as Bruce fiddles with his glasses and Tony flips through the four page spread which includes, of course, a photo of the Hulk crouching protectively over him after he almost died.

Oh. There was the morning panic attack. He'd almost thought it had forgotten about him.

"Guys?" Clint asks, eyebrows up.

*

"I'm still not a therapist," Bruce said. "But I have an idea."

Tony had been back in New York for about two weeks. Two weeks of not working on a new Iron Man suit. Two weeks of not calling any of the psychologists that Pepper and JARVIS had researched for him. Two weeks of not doing much of anything except the sort of hack engineering work that he paid moderately talented engineers fresh out of college to do.

"Lay it on me."

"We should go outside."

"Okay. Yeah. Good idea, nice theory, but I don't think it would work very well in practical terms."

"Tony."

"Bruce."

"Tony, what are you even doing in New York?"

Tony flinched, just a little, and Bruce caught it because he said, "See. You can't even hear the name of the city without reacting, and yet here you are, sitting right in the middle of it."

Tony got up from the terminal, found the herbal tea that he had, somehow or another, managed to develop a taste for, and set the kettle. "I was doing a great job of not thinking about that, up until you decided to remind me of it."

It was true, too. He had flown in on his private jet, gotten into a car right there on the tarmac, rode into the city without once looking out of the window, walked into Stark Tower and ensconced himself in a windowless suite of rooms.

"Right, but why come here at all? Why not...Milan or Rome or Florence or--"

"Did you leave a girl behind in Italy of something?"

"Or anywhere other than New York?"

Tony almost managed not to flinch that time. Almost.

He didn't know, that was the problem. Bruce was right. It made no sense for him to be here, and yet here he was. He ran his hands through his hair. "Only place short of China to get decent Chinese takeout?"

"Exposure therapy," Bruce said.

"This from the guy who tries to avoid _looking_ at the color green?"

"Down to the corner of 34th and Lexington and back."

"Why pull punches? Let's go to Harlem."

Bruce swallowed once, twice, hard. "That seems a bit ambitious for the first time out, don't you think?"

And that's when Tony got it. Bruce's idea was as much about Bruce as it was about Tony. Because Bruce lived in a windowless suite too, and he lived on takeout that was left outside the door by the staff too.

"Do it yourself psychotherapy? Sounds like a terrible plan, so yeah, of course I'm in."

Then they both looked at each other for about thirty seconds.

"I should really finish the computer model that I'm working on first, though," Tony said.

"I have, um, laundry."

The man had about forty pairs of interchangeable pant and shirt combinations, and there were people to handle the laundry.

"Tomorrow?"

"Absolutely."

It took them three days to shame each other into it, and then they were standing side by side waiting for Tony's private elevator, not making eye contact.

"I told Steve what we're doing."

"Are you kidding me?"

"I left you out of it. I just told him I was doing something stressful, and to please keep his distance, but to be ready to go if the other guy--you know. I didn't mention you."

"Yeah. Whatever."

Fifty two floors down to the private lobby, and then out through the private side entrance, and then they stood blinking in the New York summer sun.

Worst idea ever.

"34th and Lexington," Tony said. "Right."

"How hard can it be?" Bruce asked.

Tony laughed the laugh of the damned and started down the Park Avenue Viaduct toward 42nd.

They didn't talk, really. Bruce had his hands shoved in his pockets and his head down. He looked away reflexively when anyone in anything like a uniform passed their way. Tony tried to ignore the various rebuilding projects going on around them. He even succeeded, occasionally.

And then they got to 38th street and Tony's whole body clenched up and the world went gray around the edges. He thought for one terrifying second that he might actually faint, and the sheer insanity of DIY exposure therapy when you were as messed up as they were and, oh yes, one of you was harboring a possibly misunderstood but still very, very powerful green rage-monster under your skin really hit home. He stayed on his feet, mostly because he was even more terrified of the alternative.

Then he reached out and grabbed Bruce's hand.

He had to wrench it out of Bruce's pocket to do it, and Bruce looked at him like he was crazy (crazier?), but it was warm and solid and the Hulk had saved his life, so that meant he liked him. Right?

Bruce stared at their joined hands for a beat, and shrugged.

They made their way down Lexington like that. A few people glanced at them, but whether it was because they were two dudes holding hands, or because he was Tony Stark, Tony didn't know or care. They got to 35th, and Bruce froze.

"This is as far as I got, last time."

He hadn't mentioned a last time, but Tony let that slide. "We can go back, if you want." Cool and easy. Like he didn't want to turn around and sprint back toward the tower.

"No. It's one more block. I can do this."

"How's, uh, how's the big guy?"

Bruce's eyes fluttered shut and he went into self-diagnostic mode for a second. "Okay."

Half-way to 34th street, it got even less good that it had been up until then. The panic attack that he had already thought was pretty bad, actually, thanks, grew wings and teeth and went on a rampage and showed him that he didn't know what bad was.

"Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop."

Was he saying that out out? He was. Bruce pulled him into an awkward hug, apologizing and offering pointless words of comfort. Tony thought he should pull away, was amazed that Bruce had come far enough out of his shell to actually hug another human being, wanted to cuff him on the shoulder and act like he was fine, no big deal, right?

Instead, he pressed his face into Bruce's neck, and squeezed Bruce's hand until he was sure that he was going to Hulk out on them.

Bruce was still saying...things. Pointless things. Meaningless things. Mostly, things like "I'm sorry", "bad idea", "get a cab", and "breathe."

Then he said, "What's Noether's theorem?"

"Any differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system has a corresponding conservation law," Tony said, without thinking, and for one brief, wonderful moment, he was too distracted by the calculus of variations and the Ward–Takahashi identity to think about anything else. "Ask me another."

"Adiabatic theorem."

Tony lifted his head off of Bruce's shoulder. "A physical system remains in its instantaneous eigenstate if a given perturbation is acting on it slowly enough, and if there is a gap between the eigenvalue and the rest of the Hamiltonian's spectrum."

They made it home that way, still holding hands up until they got to the lobby, and by the time they had made it back to the lab, they were working out the prototype for a new type of communications satelite.

*

"Well?" Clint asks.

Tony looks at Bruce who looks...amused, actually. It's a good look on him.

Clint is still waiting for an answer.

"Photoshop," Tony says, and goes back to his cereal.

"Photoshop?" Clint is incredulous. And possibly live tweeting this conversation. @trickshot is going to experience some problems with his account later, Tony decides.

"Photoshop," Bruce agrees and digs out the fresh fruit.

They eat their breakfast in silence, not twenty feet from the window overlooking the East Side. Neither of them has it in them to go outside again, not yet, and Tony really needs to call one of those therapists that Pepper emails to him EVERY MORNING, but somehow ending up cuddling on a street corner has made looking out of the window almost bearable.

Score one for DIY psychotherapy.


End file.
